American-Latino Immigrants Proudly Assisting the Community

One of the interesting things about teaching English to people is the funny
ways they try to pronounce new sounds. In some languages, the common sounds
of "th" and "r" and others are not used, and some people have a lot of
trouble trying to pronounce them. Other people just can't pronounce some
sounds that are common in English. It never would have occurred to me that
any human being would have trouble pronouncing the word "he".

 

Evidently the Portuguese language does not use the "h" sound found in words
like "hemorrhoid" and "hen". I don't know how they laugh without being able
to say "Ha Ha," but I guess they somehow manage. The Knights Who Say Ni
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crX4E-dul4Y could not stand to hear the word
"it", but they somehow managed to form a community so I guess it shouldn't
be surprising that the Portuguese have survived as a people all these years
without being able to say, "Ha Ha." Anyway, while trying to pronounce the
pronoun "he" a Portuguese woman just could not pronounce that "h" no matter
how hard she tried. The closest she could get was to use a rolling "r":
rrrrrrreeee.

A funny thing about Spanish is that there is no word that starts with an "s"
followed by a consonant. It seems simple enough to say, "station," but all
the students pronounce it as "estation". The same with other words:
"estand", "estart", "especial", "esleep", "esteven espielberg". It's
adorable when cute girls mispronounce these words. But with a little bit of
instruction and a little bit more of practice, most people can master this
sound within a few minutes.

One of the sounds that's easy to make but hard to describe is the "th" sound
used in words like "thanks" and "thrift". It's easy to pronounce, and once
you do it it's easy, but it's difficult to describe to someone how to do it.
Think about it. How do you describe to someone how to make the "th"
sound? I'll be doggoned if I know. I tried describing it. I tried drawing
pictures. I tried asking people to get up real close as I tried to
demonstrate to them how to do it, but for the life of me I just have had no
success of instructing people how to make that sound. Another sound that's
evidently difficult to teach to Latinos is the "er" sound found in words
like "burp" and "wiener". Both the "th" sound and the "er" sound come
together in the word "Thursday" so I never look forward to teaching the days
of the week. If I can get a beginning student to say "toysday" then I call
it progress.

It's the cute accents of the senoritas that lured me to the Hispanic culture
in the first place. Ok - you got me - it was originally the puppy dog brown
eyes that lured me, but it was the cute accents that charmed me. Whenever I
heard John Lee Hooker sing "Dimples", I would mentally insert the phrase, "I
love the way you talk" into the song. I reminisced about those early days
last night as the students were learning to say "stand up" and "stop" and
"start". Edelmira's big brown eyes seem just as pretty to me as the girls
from ten years ago and her way of mispronouncing the words is just as cute.
I was tempted to not correct her mispronunciation and let her to perpetually
pronounce those words in that cute way, but for her benefit I corrected her
and helped her through it.


Correction: Earlier I wrote that a student in class, Hugo, looked like
Stuart Wood of the Bay City Rollers. He actually looks like Eric Faulkner.
My apologies. I'm not a Bay City Rollers fan so I got it mixed up.


Stuart Wood


Eric Faulkner